The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1887-06-15
ABOUT DIRT ROADS.
The Evil and Remedy--The Economy OF
Having Good Roads.
From The Nation

(FTOm Tne NatlOn.)
About this time of year Americans be
gin to give an amount of attention to
roads and road-making which is sadly
wanting during the rest Of it. There is
probably no people in the world which
has made such progress in the arts of
civilized life generally that seemsto care
so little for what a good many social
philosophers put among the very fore
most of them, the art CT road-making
In fact, some philosophers have pro-
nourced the history Of roads the history
of civilization. Nothing distinguishes a
civilized country fronl barbarous one
so markedly as the difference between
the means of communication between
one locality and another. AS a general
rule, one knows that people is rising
in the scale by seeing its roads improve;
one knows that it is declining by seeing
its roads go out of repair. Nothing
marked so wildly the great plunge into
barbarism which Europe took after the
fall of the Roman empire as the disap-
pearance of the superb lines of commu-
nication which led from the forum
straight as an arrow to every corner of
the Roman world. Nothing, too, tells
the tale of Chinese decadence so dis
tinctly as the ruin which has oTertaken
the great roads and canals which at an
earlier period connected the capital with
the proviI ces. When an American goes
to Europe for tie first time, nothing
seems odder than the superiority OF the
European roads in countries which can
make no preterce Of equaing tie United
States in other marks of material
progress. We are not e declining peo-
pie; on the contrary we are the most
growing people in the world. We are
not among the poor nations OF the globe;
on the contrary we are probably the
very richest. We are not Indifferent to
material improvement; on the contrary
the most frequent charge made against
us is that We give too much attention to
it, and yet we are worse of, by far, in
the matter Of roads than any other high
ly civilized community.
The original reason OF the American
indifference about roads was probably
the rapidty with which the early settlers
scattered themselves in small communi-
ties over wide areas. The fewer people
there are to the square mile of inhabited
territory, of course the costlier roads be-
come; and when population is very much
dispersed, as in frontier settlements,
people cease to think of good roads as
luxury within their reach, and devote
themselves simply to the task of keeping
them passable. This tendency to neg
lect the art of road-making would prob
ably have disappeared early in this Gen.
tury ii the railroads had not come In as
the great lines Of communication, thrown
the post roads and military roads out OF
use, and relegated all roads but railroads
to the condition of crossroads or by
ways. The railroads not only did this,
but they dispersed the settlers over still
wider areas than ever, and thus made the
prospect of running good highway
past every mans door seem hopeless.
The consequence has been that the early
colonial or frontier state of mind-in
which road was considered good
enough If it was simply practicable to
wheeled vehicles (that is, if there were
no holes or rocks in it sufficiently
formidable to upset a carriage), and any
thing better than this an unattainable
luxury-has almost settled into national
tradition.
One has only 10 go few miles out Of
any Of our large cities to find the roads
in every direction being repaired in the
exact manner il which they were re-
paired by the struggling colonists be-
tween 1880 and l700-that is, nothing IS
attempted beyond filing up the holes
with any material that is at hand, and
afording facilities for the water to run
off. The material that is at hand is, OF
course, the mud of compost out OF the
adjacent ditch. This is shovelled up
with the utmost gravity and deposited
all along the centre, filing up the cavi-
ties and hiding from view the projecting
rocks. In districts in which gravel or
strong clay is obtained in this way, the
result is often satisfactory enough. But
as a general rule the contents OF the
ditch are simply mud or decayed veget-
able matter, fit only for manure. Spread
over the road as plaster, it rapidly be-
comes dust and is swept away by the
wind, or else becomes mud and is washed
back again into the ditch, or down into
the hollows, in which in wet weather it
forms C kind of quagmire, through
which horses toll YEARLY. The one Gd-
vance we have made in this curious
process over the early colonists is the
invention Of the large iron scoop or
shovel, worked by oxen or horses, as
substitute for the manual labor of the
olden days. A foreigner, seeing it at
work for the first time, is always disposed
to believe that the road is being prepar-
ed for crop of some kind, and as a
matter of fact we have ourselves seen
many mile Of country road in which,
after the spring repairs, potatoes or corn
would have grown very luzurlantly.
OF course there are signs Of progress
out of this primitive condition in the
more densely settled districts on the
eastern coast and in the neighborhood
CT the large cities. The Park roads,
with which people have been made IA
millar during the past thirty years, have
shown those who have never been abroad
what good road is, and have thus
raised the standard of roadmaking, as
the Vienna bakery raised the standard OF
bread-making all over the country after
the Philadelphia exposition in 1871. But
most rural districts suffer greatly from
hot having standard at ali. Some OF
those VINO tax themselves most freely
su:fer most. because the plentiful supply
CT money not only does not improve the
roads, but breeds political ring, who
treat it Gs 'sboodle." The reason they